Tournament Feedback

[Dragoon]

As many of you know already, we have a League (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=619.0) for those of you who like to PvP.  Things have been a little slow but we want to really push this again now that we're on the new forum as well as getting new cards from Zanzarino.  But on top of this, we will be starting tournaments as well.  Before, it was hard to get interest in these because there was no incentive besides bragging rights.  But cisco has been talking to zanzarino about in game prizes and zanz is all for it.  At the very least, the winners will be getting electrum added to their account.  But there's a good possibility that cards can be won this way as well.  Right now, zanz is considering making special edition tournament cards that can be won.  These will be just like the normal cards (probably), but with a different graphical image.

So what I want to get is some feedback.  Here are some random thoughts from us.

You don't have to be League member to take part in the Tournaments.  But if you are a League member, every win in a tournament is doubled for the League.

If SG or CK can do it, imbedding rewards and/or rankings into the forum would be awesome.

We don't want to take time away from zanz from working on new cards and features so it'd be great if we can get the graphics for the special edition tournament cards from the community.  We might be able to use some from the Arts section but if any of you think you have the artistic skills to make new graphics, let us know.  Who knows, your art might one day be in the game!

Also we need some people with time and organizational skills to host some of these tournaments.  We'll try to have everything you need to run it.  We just need someone in chat who can keep things moving and organized.  Since it's difficult to have one time that works for everyone, I'm thinking of having 3 different zones for tournaments: a Europe/Africa/Middle East zone, a North and South America zone, and an Asian/Australian zone.  It'd be nice to have 2-3 hosts for each zone so we're not dependent on one person.

Suggestions?

[Scaredgirl]

This thread talks about some of the things I was going to start a thread about. I might as well say it here to avoid multiple threads, so here it goes.

Tournament needs a better scoring system
This is something that is vital. Players have been surprisingly active and patient in writing those "Mr. X won against Mr. Bean 2-0" posts, and that's cool, but if you want to make the tournament bigger that system has to change. Majority of players are lazy and will not participate in something like that. To get the masses involved you need to have a very simple and easy to use system.

Ideally it would be a system without the middleman. Something where all the players would have access to a web page that has tournament rankings and scoring. You can then choose from a dropdown menu with all the participants..

"Winner"
"Loser"
.. and then press "Submit"

This will update the database and also the web page itself. It would also show who submitted the score so there would be foul play.

Basically it would be like a tournament Wiki, and would be a much better system than the current one. of course this would require some coding and I'm not sure if it' s worth it. It would be nice to hear from Zanzarino if he's planning on implementing some kind of tournament system inside the game itself.

As for these 3 different tournament.. I wouldn't recommend it. If I understand correctly, it's difficult to get enough players for one tournament, let alone three. It's better to start small and then add new timezone based tournaments as more people join. You can find a time of day that enables most of American and European players to participate. Australian players get shafted but they always do on online gaming.

[Cisco]

I agree on both points SG. Think we just need to keep it at a certain time . Not three because that brings loads of complications with it. Say like 1pm-4pm  in the US that be about  6pm to 9-10pm in europe etc  and just anounce those times. Also it be best to have rules implemented to make it fair for all players. It should not be a situation where I play a noob  and destroy him/her because they can´t compete with the deck that I spent ages to grind for. Also to keep it simple first tourney will go with electrons.
Question would be how many seems fair 1000-2000 not realy sure. Sg you know if any of the trainers allow or could allow pvp? That may help out on the fairness situation.
 I will go into detail with some other things tommorow.

[Dragoon]

You guys are right.  In my excitement, I got ahead of myself.  We should start small and scale to what I said if things ever got that big.  As far as the time, that's gonna be tough.  You're talking about 11 hours difference between California and European Russia.  Maybe we should take turns for both continent's evenings?  If we catered to the European evening, then maybe between 7-9PM for GMT +1 which would be 10-12AM PST and 1-3PM EST in the States.  Next time we could do sometime between 7-9PM for GMT -6 (CST) which would be 1-3 AM for GMT.

If we want to have the most number of players, then yeah, we need to somehow level the playing field.  One option is to do no upgrades for the tournaments (with the exception maybe of the shards since they're useless unupgraded).  As far as how much electrum, the more electrum involved, the more incentive people will have to play.  I'm not saying it should be an extraordinary amount like 100k, but it should be pretty significant.  For most veterans, 1-2k is hardly worth the time since you can sometimes get that in 1 game against the FGs.  Maybe 10k?  And will we have prizes for second and third place?

As far as the scoring system goes, yes a re-haul is definitely in order.  Unfortunately, I don't know of a better way of doing the scoring with our current limitations in the forum.  You or Chris would have to rig something up if we want to make it easier and stupid proof.  But it'd be good to check with zanz to see if an in-game tournament system is on the road map at all and how soon he thought he might develop it if it is on his roadmap.

[Scaredgirl]

As far as the scoring system goes, yes a re-haul is definitely in order.  Unfortunately, I don't know of a better way of doing the scoring with our current limitations in the forum.  You or Chris would have to rig something up if we want to make it easier and stupid proof.  But it'd be good to check with zanz to see if an in-game tournament system is on the road map at all and how soon he thought he might develop it if it is on his roadmap.

I have something up my sleeve that might solve this whole scoring problem. Or at least make it a bit easier to keep score. It's a part of this secret project I started working on yesterday. I'll start a thread about it tonight or tomorrow.

[Cisco]

Nice SG can´t wait.
For the prize heres a suggestion.... 5000 first 3000 sec 2000 third and 1000 4th. I´m all for a high prize like 10000 but  think it be over a little. So here is what I think we can do for this one ..... tourney is on sunday.Time Is irelevent for me as I don´t sleep much anyways lol. Using that google Spread sheet like sg had a thread about once would be best for now I guess. People should sign up via forum so we know who is joining and can match them up before it beginns. If the player that signed up isn´t there to play, the  oppenent gets the auto win into the next round.
To speed it up Dragoon and I can keep up with writing it on paper saying who plays who from round 2 and on. And later post the SS in the forum. The decks have to be unupgraded aside from certain cards like animate We. Maybe just that card. It be a shame to limit deck variation  to much because they are un upgraded. Rainbow no rainbow?? It may be more interesting limiting the decks to just mono and duo. Max for every game is 3 rounds and decks can be changed up between rounds.
Whene desync happens the round gets restarted. It will be up to the players to make a screenshot when desync or anything else for that matter happens, so there is proof if the other player doesn´t agree. Thats the only way I see to prevent cheating.
Like always feedback be appreciated. There is a strong intrest for this tourney just not as much whene it comes to contibutating to this thread so far.

[Dragoon]

I'm not sure Sunday is the best day for people.  I'd guess Saturday would be better for most people.  If we made this first one Europe-oriented, we could start maybe 7PM GMT which would be 2PM EST and 11AM PST in the States.  But since most people don't work on Saturday, hopefully more people in the States can play in the tournament.  Also, this coming weekend is Christmas weekend.  I'm not sure how many people can or want to play then since they'll be busy with friends, family, and their new toys.

Yup, we can use SG's PvP starting kit.  But we could also use this (http://www.printyourbrackets.com/), especially if we have more than 8 people.  We would just have to constantly upload updated versions as people are eliminated.

As far as the rules go, this is what I think.  I'd say we should go for a simple single elimination.  Opponents play best of three games.  You can change your deck between each game.  First one to win two games moves on to the next tier.  When we get down to 4 players.  The 2 winners will play for 1st and 2nd place while the two losers play for 3rd and 4th place.  Use only unupgraded cards except for Shard of Divinity, Shard of Gratitude, and Animate Weapon.

Like cisco said, we should have a sign-up and have everyone paired up before tournament day.  We can use the die in the chat to see who gets a first round by if we have odd number of players.  Once people start playing, they post their wins in the thread and cisco or I will update it as we get info.  After the first round, we'll announce who faces off in the second round and then everyone starts playing again.  We keep doing this until we have a champion.

[Dragoon]

I was just talking to Puppychow in the chat, and he mentioned that we could pair people up by their score.  He referenced college basketball and the March Madness 64 team tournament.  They have 4 divisions with 16 teams each.  In each division, the first round has the highest and lowest scores playing each other, and then the next highest and lowest, etc.  So #1 would play #16.  #2 play #15. etc.  It looks something like this (I hope this makes sense):

ROUND 1 ----------------| Score #1 ----------------| ----------------| Score #8 ----------------|                       >>>    ----------------| Score #3 ----------------| ----------------| Score #6 ----------------| ----------------| Score #4 ----------------| ----------------| Score #5 ----------------|                       >>>    ----------------| Score #2 ----------------| ----------------| Score #7 ----------------|

ROUND 2 ----------------| Score. #1 ----------------| ----------------| Score #3 ----------------|                     >>>    ----------------| Score#4 ----------------| ----------------| Score#2 ----------------|

ROUND 3 ----------------| Score. #3 ----------------|                       >>>    ----------------| Score#2 ----------------|

WINNER ----------------| Score#3 ----------------|

[Cisco]

Sounds great to me Dragoon.  One thing it probaly be best for us to  be in chat and follow the hole thing there and update as having people post  win and losses may be  to much for some .